Strategies
by polar-realm
Summary: A chess match after a mission gone wrong, and looking beyond first impressions. Uhura and Kirk friendship.


Strategies

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><p>Content note: some swearing, mentions of Tarsus<p>

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><p>Uhura finds the captain right where she knew he would be, hidden away on one of the upper level observation decks, the one you can always count on to be deserted. Every large ship has at at least one place like it – hard to notice, inconvenient to get to, with nothing about it impressive enough to be worth seeking out. Just a few standard issue chairs and tables, some innocuous wall hangings and a lot of silence. And, currently, the only genius-level repeat offender in this sector of the Alpha Quadrant. A year ago, she might have been surprised that Kirk wasn't drunk right now, or down planetside looking for a fight. And maybe a year ago he would have been. It's hard for her to say, sometimes, how much Kirk has changed and how much is just her changing perceptions.<p>

His eyes don't move from the chessboard, but she can see the change in his posture, muscles tensed in his arms and shoulders, feet braced against the floor.

"Hey," she says.

He does glance up then, and throws her a look of wide-eyed innocence and a flippant wave, which she ignores.

"Nyota," he says, and for once, she doesn't correct him. Just takes the seat across from him, considering the array of pieces on the triple-tiered board.

Chess has never been her kind of game. She gets the lure of logic and strategy, but the linguist in her prefers a contest with more ambiguity, rules that aren't quite so clear and immutable. Still, she picks up the red bishop sitting closest to her and makes her move. Kirk grins at her – the first time since they beamed back to the ship that she's seen him wearing an expression that doesn't look fake – and counters with his knight. And with that, the game is on.

They play in silence, for the most part. Uhura's attention is half on surviving the game and half on looking past it, playing out that last mission in her mind, tracking it back step by step and wondering if there's any point where it might have gone differently. Maybe he's doing the same thing. Or maybe he's remembering something else, much longer ago, a planet and an _incident_ that most people only ever think of as history. She plays an aggressive game, forcing him to react to her moves even when they turn out to be missteps, doing everything she can think of to keep him on the defensive. It's the only way she can think of to pull him back from the precipice of his own mind, and it works – she can see his focus shift back to the present, the map of black and red in front of him and the ever-changing arrangement of kings and queens and pawns, and as he falls into the game she sees the restless anger in him starting to lose it's grip.

He beats her in the end, which isn't surprising considering how much more practice he has at this game, but she makes him fight for it. This entire strategy would be worthless if she wasn't capable of making him fight. And once he's finally angled her into a trap she can't slip out of, she knocks over the red king with a quick little half smile and an undefeated flourish.

After that, there is nothing left to distract them. Stillness settles over the small room again, and with it a strained hush that cuts just a little too deep. Kirk starts tapping out a nervous rhythm on the table's edge, something that seems like it might have some progression to it before collapsing back into irregularity, irritating enough to a mind trained to seek patterns that she has to fight down the urge to grab his hand just to hold him still. She sees something in his face shutting down again, and she realizes that she hasn't thought past the endgame, and maybe she should have.

"Bastard got away," he says.

He picks up the fallen king absently, holds it in his open palm, but his eyes are fixed somewhere far away. His face looks hollow in the artificial light. Not quite starved – thats an illusion, and a morbid one – but feral, almost, and driven.

"Let me guess," he says. "I did what I had to do. Right?"

"Short of mind control, I don't know that there's any such thing." She shakes her head, laughs slightly, even though it really isn't all that funny at all. "Jim, listen to me."

She reaches across the table and closes her hand over his, feeling the cool smoothness and solidity of the chess piece he's holding. She knows it's heavier than it looks, and only partly because it's been carved out of solid stone, and the bones of his fingers feel surprisingly light beneath the calloused skin. Impermanent. But he's still here, and so is she, and they did win, and goddamn it, that _does_ matter.

"You did what you chose to do."

His mouth twists into something that does not remotely resemble a smile.

"I chose to let the murdering son of a bitch run, is what you mean."

"Yeah," she says. "You did. And you managed to get Spock and I out of there safely because of it. And you know what? I can't speak for anyone else, but just for myself? I value our lives more than Kodos's death any day."

Kirk's eyes narrow, and he jerks his hand away abruptly.

"Hey, hold up a minute, I wasn't trying to imply – "

"You didn't," she says. "My point is, you acted like a captain back there."

"That just keeps on surprising you, doesn't it?"

"Not nearly as much as it used to," she says.

He laughs at that, bright and quiet and too casual, and it's funny how for all her languages, every keen and calculated diplomatic transmission and every subtle shade of meaning she keeps at her command, she still doesn't know that there's anything she can say that can measure up against the past. But she's here, right words or no. And she's not leaving until she's sure that Kirk – that _Jim_ – is back on solid ground.

"How's Spock doing?" he asks.

"Minor injuries only."

"I know. Not what I meant."

"He's fine," she says. "All of us are fine."

It's true, she realizes. They are. Or they will be, with time and a bit of rest, and that's good enough for now. And as for Kirk... it's hard to say. He isn't fine, that much is obvious, but he isn't falling either. Whatever balance he's found, it seems more tentative than it had during the chess game, but she also suspects that it runs deeper.

"He's down in sickbay still. I told him to meet us up here when he finally gets bored with driving our good doctor to drink."

"That might be a while," Kirk says.

"That it might."

She notices the deceptively guileless charm in his eyes, and braces herself to deflect a barrage of improprieties regarding what they might do with their time alone. Captain or not, Jim Kirk never did make it safely out of adolescence, and any other day she'd be busy calculating the most efficient way of cutting his ego back down to size. Now she's just happy to see that stupid smirk back in action, even if it is a little guarded, a little lost. But he doesn't proposition her this time, doesn't flirt or even try to crack a joke. He tosses her the chess piece, and she grabs it out of the air in one fluid motion and plunks it back down on the board, right where it needs to go. He's already gathering up his own pieces and setting them back in order.

"Care for a rematch?" he asks.

"Might as well," she says. They've got time. They've got all the time in the world. And she's running through strategies in her head already, plotting out which boundaries to test, which to let lie, what ground can be sacrificed and what must at all costs be held. Chess isn't her game, but she sees the light catching in Kirk's eyes again as he sets his own plans into motion, and she knows this is going to be worth it. Because there's more than pieces on a chessboard to fight for here, more than one kind of victory. And this time, Uhura's got no intention of losing.


End file.
